Agri Business Review: Specials Magazine

At a Glance: • Smarter Weed Control – Where traditional laser-based weed removal systems struggle to eliminate bigger weeds, Ullmanna has no problems to work in these areas with its knives. • Unmatched Visibility in Any Condition –Changing light can throw off most weed control systems, especially those with fixed lighting. Ullmanna’s AROW toolkit takes a more innovative route with adaptive LED lighting that adjusts on the fly—whether it’s midday sun or working after dark. With the ability to capture a lot of detailed images per second per row and process them in real time using Nvidia Jetson Nano chips, AROW assures faster, more accurate weed removal that protects crops and keeps operations running smoothly. • More Crops, Less Hassle – Frequent manual adjustments (or “tuning”) are needed for many existing weeding machines when switching from one crop type to another. And these adjustments are often limited to a small set of pre-programmed crops. Ullmanna’s NEWMAN stands out because it’s designed to recognise a wide variety of crops—over 90—and can learn to identify new ones quickly, often within a few hours. This flexibility reduces the need for repeated manual tuning and makes the machine easier to deploy across different types of farms and crop rotations. • No Setup Delays, Just Start Weeding, Very Easy to Handle –Setting up and adjusting traditional weeding machines can be time-consuming and complicated. Ullmanna’s NEWMAN streamlines this process with an intuitive, Wi-Fi-connected system. Each machine includes a tablet linked to the Powerbox, providing real-time status updates for the entire system. Operators can effortlessly select the crop, set weeding depth and fine-tune knife movements with precision. If you’re an organic sugar beet farmer in Austria, Germany or elsewhere managing 50 hectares, staying compliant with organic farming standards typically means relying on manual weeding—a labour-intensive task that demands an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 labour hours per season. At €15 per hour, that amounts to an annual cost of up to €225,000. But what if you could cut up to 90 percent of that? It may sound improbable, but Ullmanna’s AI-powered NEWMAN ecosystem has that level of efficiency. The system includes, for instance, a six-row weeding machine mounted behind a tractor paired with the AROW toolkit—a compact AI vision solution equipped with 2D and 3D cameras, synchronised LED lighting, a computer and control software. Together, they enable precise in-row weeding, accurately identifying and removing weeds without harming crops.